<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Burning Kindness by softmoonlight</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27567205">Burning Kindness</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoonlight/pseuds/softmoonlight'>softmoonlight</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Enemy to Caretaker, Gen, Introspection, Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine, Philosophy, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars), Post-Episode: s03e20 Twin Suns, Wakes &amp; Funerals, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:14:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27567205</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoonlight/pseuds/softmoonlight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Maul did not deserve a funeral.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Darth Maul</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952500</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober, Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Burning Kindness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>-This is a stream of consciousness and made me emotional to write because I really just...love Obi-Wan so much, okay.</p>
<p>-Unlike a lot of my ficlets this was not intentionally an even hundred number, but it just worked out that way.</p>
<p>-Does it count as "enemy to caretaker" if one of the people is now dead? Because I'm counting it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maul did not deserve a funeral.</p>
<p>After everything he’d done, Maul did not deserve much of anything. He had spent his entire life in misery and determined to drag everyone down with him into that same feeling, Obi-Wan most of all. To pay him any sort of respect in death would be insane, would it not?</p>
<p>Yet, sitting here on his knees in the cool nighttime sands, the man’s body still warm in his arms, Obi-Wan decided, sure as anything, to give him one anyway.</p>
<p>Had anyone been around to ask, he would have given a perfectly rational answer: he had to do <em>something</em> with the body, lest it draw unwelcome attention to him and therefore Luke.</p>
<p>But this was not the reason Obi-Wan did it, because no amount of rationality could force a person to do such a thing if they didn’t want to. In truth, he didn’t know the reason.</p>
<p>He marveled at himself as he lifted the corpse up, heavy cybernetic legs and all, and carried it back close to his hut, even as the weight threatened to make him buckle, walking the entire journey since young Ezra had taken the bantha at Obi-Wan’s insistence. His arms shook and ached with age, but he managed, one foot in front of the other until he returned home.</p>
<p>How dare he, when Maul had killed so many? How dare he, when one of Maul’s last actions had been to threaten Luke? How dare he, when so many others would never have their own respects paid?</p>
<p>Put simply, Obi-Wan was not in the business of vengeance, or indeed of holding on at all. His time remaining here was short and growing shorter with every passing second; he only remained because he needed to keep the boy safe—and perhaps, he dared hope, if his uncle ever relented, to train him, too.</p>
<p>If Obi-Wan could watch over his best friend’s son even after he had killed everyone left that he’d loved, he could bestow rites on his enemy who’d killed the others before then.</p>
<p>He was oddly at peace with it, in a way he could never be with what had become of Anakin. This confrontation was long overdue, and for both their sakes, Obi-Wan placed him on a makeshift pyre, and kept vigil as the flames flickered away, burning away the physical form Maul had single-handedly maintained out of sheer rage for the man who had killed him once and would one day kill him again. The legs, too, melted, slowly but surely, and Obi-Wan let the words slip out easily as breathing, a song about rejoining the Force as all things must.</p>
<p>It was the way he had once watched Qui-Gon burn, some thirty years ago now.</p>
<p>And yes, it really had been that long, hadn’t it? It felt more than one lifetime ago.</p>
<p>Maul did not deserve any of it, no. And Obi-Wan did not have to forgive him, nor did he, not truly. He probably never would.</p>
<p>It did not mean he held on to the resentment, however; it did not mean he couldn’t recognize that Maul had probably never been given an ounce of kindness in his life. It had been long, longer than it should ever have been, and it was miserable, and maybe Obi-Wan was an old fool, but he couldn’t bring himself to just discard the body and leave it to be buried in the unforgiving winds and sands.</p>
<p>They had all been so hurt by it all, and he couldn’t even make himself be angry about him anymore. Just quietly sad that neither of them had been granted a life where they could be happy. Because wasn’t that all any of them ever wanted? Wasn’t that what even Maul would have wanted, if he’d ever realized that fixating on Obi-Wan was trapping him in misery?</p>
<p>He would never know, but this was the least he could do.</p>
<p>Because Obi-Wan refused to give in the Dark that surrounded him. He refused to do things because of anger anymore. He was tired and worn and broken, but he would never stop being Light. It was all he had left—the promise of goodness returning.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>